Most of the models are family members, some are students, and a few friends are present as well. I was interested in familiarity, the passage of time, and the sense of generations within the unfolding of the image.

The drawing became a way of seeing the rhythm of day to day life within a large family. Women sprinkle across the four panels, a sea of many mothers and daughters, grandmothers and sisters as well as brothers, husbands, and sons …creating a quilted pattern of greys, blacks, and whites. This reflects the noise and energy of my particular ‘many’. When supplies arrived and I held my huge box of 500 pencils in my hands, I laughed at the absurdity of working this scale with graphite, and in the same moment, knew its rightness. These materials would reflect the difficulty, aspiration, complexity, and joy of what it is to be part of a family. Four hundred and twenty one graphite pencils worked down to dust in my hands at the end of a drawing about life.

Through the patient building of form, the layered density of space, the contrast of light and dark, I framed this ongoing experience, to come closer to this thing we call home.